I didn’t have anything else planned before I was going to meet the gang at Charlie’s Place so I agreed to take a ride with Dorfmeier to see Little Pinky. It turned out that Howell Mill Road was about a twenty minute drive from Dorfmeier’s office.
We turned off onto a gravel road and rolled down to the guard shack. It was unattended and we continued on until we came to a rusted trailer parked to our left, overlooking a deep hole where they had been cutting out rock for the past ten years. An old beat up red Chevy pick up truck was parked in the front. It looked like someone had spent hours throwing rocks at it. The sides were filled with dents, the windshield was sporting a crack from one side down the middle to the other side. The tail gate was bent in the middle like someone had driven a piece of equipment into it. A stream of yellow light was visible in the window of the trailer. There was a hasp opened on the door with a paddle lock secured off to the side. A sign on the door said Office.
We walked up two grated metal steps. Dorfmeier looked around before he rapped on the door. A large black man opened it and invited us in. He was as bald as Dorfmeier and twice as big. How he ended up being called Little Pinky was beyond me, unless it referred to something of his that wasn’t visible to most people.
I looked around. There were file cabinets against the far wall and a table holding a coffee pot and dirty cups and a gray metal desk with two folding chairs sitting directly in front of it. Little Pinky walked around and stood behind the desk, motioning for us to sit in the chairs.
Dorfmeier got right to it.
“Listen, Little Pinky, I think you know something and you’re scared, so I’ll make a deal with you. If you tell me what I want to know, I won’t arrest you for trying to sell me an ounce of Blue Magic.”
His eyes shot wide open. He looked at me. I shrugged.
“I didn’t try to sell you nothin’.”
“Who do you think they are gonna believe? Me or you? Especially when I find drugs in your pockets after I search you.”
“Fuck you, man. I don’t want none of this.”
“You don’t have a choice. Sit down and let’s dig in and share a few family secrets. What happened? You put your dick in the wrong hole or something?”
“Yeah, or something.”
After Greg mapped out how Little Pinky was going to help him set up Shotgun Mason to take a fall, we left a shaken man when we drove away.
“Do you think he will leave the warehouse door unlocked and the alarm off Saturday when he leaves?” I asked.
“Oh yeah. He knows I wouldn’t hesitate to throw a pinch on him for carrying. I already did it to a friend of his.”
“Aren’t you worried about retaliation?”
“You kidding me? A black man retaliate against a white cop in Atlanta? Shit the Klan would be all over him like white on rice and that boy is more scared of the Klan than he is of the Atlanta PD.”
“Why not have Little Pinky pick up the book and then have someone else plant it in Shotgun’s car?”
“We could do that but I don’t trust that book in Little Pinky’s hands. It’s too valuable. Everything we have been working on depends on us getting that book. We need someone we can trust and I know I can trust you, Max. You and I went through a lot together and we are here today because of that. The Japs would have had you if I didn’t pull you under those dead